The Digest. 05.09.08.

Shipwreck, 2008, an impromptu sculpture made of driftwood by R.L. Croft, with Michael Anthony, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Click here to see an image that conveys the scale. (Photo courtesy of R.L. Croft.)

• Even as casualties mount, and hundreds of thousands of people are without food, water and shelter, the Burmese junta refuses entry to foreign aid workers.
• Colbert interviews Hasan Elahi, a Florida New Jersey-based artist and professor accused of terrorist activities, who maintains a website in which he tracks himself for the FBI. In looking at all the photos of what he eats, all I can say is dude likes meat.
• British artist to face manslaughter charges after two women are killed by one of his sculptures.
• Artist turns L.A. traffic islands into “national parks.” See a photo essay. (For those who are into contextualization: It’s reminiscent of Darius & Downey.)
• “If the winning entry of this year’s Cartier award is a joke, it’s got a terrible punchline.”
• Drudge + Clinton + Warhol.
• In NYC: When art imitates tourism.
• Sandro Bondi named Italy’s new culture minister. No word on whether he’s a fan of antiquities repatriation. Though, apparently, he is afraid of flying.
• The new U.S. embassy in Beijing will feature art by Jeff Koons Cai Guo-Qiang, Louise Bourgeois (please tell me it’s the giant cock) and Robert Rauschenberg.
• The NYT on Carnegie: “Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International, is the latest exercise in handsome, measured, frictionless thoughtfulness. It may actually have more than its share of interesting art and poetic juxtapositions. Yet almost nothing happens.”
• S.F. MoMA acquires prints by William Eggleston.
• Sotheby’s posts first quarter loss because of lower sales and higher salaries. Sounds like Sotheby’s is being run by the government.
• New Book: Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon.
• Reap What You Sew, an interactive video installation by Nicole Mackinlay at Barney’s, that shows shoppers where in Africa the materials for their fancy togs came from.
• Lewis Black on Bush’s economic stimulus plan: “This stimulus plan is about Americans buying crap.”
• John Cage performs Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret in 1960.
• Drawing gets its due at the Menil in Houston.
• Gold Farming: People who play multiplayer online games in order to sell product to other players.
• Barry Manilow Lived Here: The Kaufmann Desert House goes up for bids next Tuesday at Christie’s.
• Architects at Play at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.
• A Libeskind-style tank for your goldfish.
• Winners from the VI Biennial of Iberoamerican Architecture & Urbanism in Lisbon: Medellin’s Parque España Library, by Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, took the top prize.
• Defining a Toronto style of architecture. (Via Contemporist.)
• Preservationist coalition wants to restore Miami’s Marine Stadium, a sweeping Modernist structure designed by Hilario Candela in 1963, which has sat abandoned on the city’s waterfront since the hurricane of ’92.
• The Wicked Witch of the West is Dead: NYC’s Westside Railyards project, which was gonna be one big crap-ass megadevelopment, is finito.
• David Adjaye’s designs on display at Denver’s MCA, through May 25^th.
• BKLYN Designs Fair opens tomorrow.
• Street art of the Day: Dhear and Smithe in Mexico.
• Sam Flores and Saner paint in Mexico City.
• Your moment of Mother’s Day. (Thanks, Yvonne!)